Revealing temporal and spatial variations in CO2 emission factor of electricity generation in Japan

Hideki Shimada, Tomonori Honda, Yuya Imamura, Ruth Anne Gonocruz and Akito Ozawa

Energy, 2025, vol. 326, issue C

Abstract: The electricity generation sector in many countries is undergoing drastic changes toward decarbonization. A major driver of this change is the rapid integration of renewable energy, the availability of which varies temporally and spatially. To evaluate how such variations affect CO2 emissions from electricity generation, this study measured the average emission factor across 10 different electricity service areas in Japan. Using hourly generation data spanning seven years from each area, our study revealed substantial temporal and spatial variations in the emission factor. Specifically, the results show (1) significant intraday variation with smaller values during daytime hours, (2) yearly variation with decreasing values over time, and (3) substantial spatial variation in both temporal variation and magnitude. We also used real consumption data of heat pump water heaters to simulate the extent to which CO2 emissions can be mitigated by shifting their operation schedules from midnight to daytime, finding that households can reduce CO2 emissions by 158 kg annually on average.

Keywords: Renewable energy; Demand side management; Heat pump water heaters; General algebraic modeling system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544225018791
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:326:y:2025:i:c:s0360544225018791

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2025.136237

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().